Thea Awakening Can Encounters Occur Again

Thea: The Enkindling [official site] is a turn-based game of survival and strategy fix in a nighttime world of Slavic myths. As a grouping of humans, you accept emerged from an era of bad times and must regrow your hamlet into something resembling a society. In the beginning of this 2-part diary, Brendan attempts simply that.

I have 5 bones, 77 meats and 6 children. Those are my village's resources. There's a lot of other things, of course, but those are the nigh important. The children will one day abound into fully-fledged villagers but for now, they are marked equally a resource, possibly stored in the same warehouse every bit the coal and vegetables. Merely information technology is their potential that keeps the residue of united states going – the thought of a brighter future that makes life worth living in the town of Bilge Finger. I wonder what happens when you drag the children to this box?

"You are well-nigh to destroy three x Kid. Are you sure?"

Thea: The Awakening is a lot better than I expected. It's a not-quite-4X strategy survival game. The story begins by juggling all the fantasy tropes you lot can call back of. There's an all-seeing evil imaginatively titled 'the darkness' and recognisable badness in the grade of skeletons, goblins, demons, spiders and witches. But there'south as well some Slavic twists on the genre – the Dziody are a crowd of erstwhile geezers who beloved to eat, and if you lot visit them bearing food they'll cure whatsoever curses y'all've got lingering virtually your person. I am as well playing as Zorya, mad axe god of the Aurora.

Information technology's a game of two parts – you tin ship gangs of characters out into the hex-based land to explore and gather materials, while others remain in the village farming carrots, collecting firewood and crafting vests made out of ophidian leather. Pop-up events keep yous on your toes, and you earn points to research new craftable items.

As I check this research screen I am offered the run a risk to invest in many possibilities – leather, cloth, amber. I have decided to invest all my inquiry points into bones. I am absolutely certain this branch of cognition will come in handy some mean solar day. At that place'due south as well combat in the class of a carte game - more on that afterwards. The important affair to know almost Thea is that you tin can rename your town and villagers. This is absolutely the cornerstone of any decent videogame.

I get-go out as I always do, by making sure I have given my settlement a majestic and appropriate moniker. The game has suggested Ostoya, but Bilge Finger is much better. The expeditionary group can besides be renamed. This posse are proving to be a group of great adventurers and have already murdered several small spiders. They are now called The Bone Crew. There'southward but i trained craftsman present in Bilge Finger while the Os Crew are traipsing effectually. He is the leader of the village. He is called Stab King.

At that place is no way to signify that he is the chieftain in-game, and so I am recording it here for the sake of future historians. One mean solar day, equally he and the other villagers are gathering veg and forest, a mole pops out of the ground and shouts "oi!" at 1 of the villagers. It is carrying a tiny shovel. The surprised villager says hello and the mole looks at him with contempt, then leaves. These are the kind of events yous can expect in Thea.

As the Bone Crew is out picking upwards bister stones, I meet a witch on the hexy landscape and decide to confront her. The combat is resolved in a crude carte du jour game of attack and defence numbers, with added 'tactic cards' that grant bonuses or rearrange your place in the assault queue (to give yous a hazard to kill enemy cards before they utilise an attack of their own). It is a weak and flimsy game of numbers and turn order.

Only strangely, you as well accept to play this menu-based minigame for 'social' encounters. So even talking your way out of a situation with bluster or charm requires you to go through the motions of the carte du jour game. I start to threaten the witch, telling her all nigh the exploits of the Os Crew and their culture of heart-eating, a practice which is a complete falsehood. 3 great warriors - Smellfiend, Plop the Whizzo and Mayle Gayze – step into the loonshit. They brainstorm their assault past arguing with three giant rats.

Piddling speech bubbles announced over the enemy cards equally the rats consider our fierce rhetoric. The game besides has sound furnishings for this – incoherent mumbles that sound like a muttering dad from The Sims trying to flirt with the neighbours. "Mhhmn-mhm?" says Mayle Gayze, to a rat. "Mmmm-hm-hm," answers the rodent, conceding to the hero's superior talents at formal debating. The numbers stack in our favour and the witch is vanquished. She runs away and drops some seaweed. The Os Crew have won the mean solar day.

They proceed on their adventure, spiralling around the settlement, uncovering the shroud of darkness around the town and getting into more arguments with rats. At 1 betoken they are attacked by a demented bat, a raven and some annoyed bees. Bucket Girl, a gatherer armed with a behemothic hammer, suffers a wound. But it is OK. Setting upward a campsite and having enough nutrient and firewood on your expedition will permit whatever injure warriors heal themselves over the course of a turn.

After everyone is back to force, an run across with the living dead suggests I could sneak upwardly on them instead of attacking outright. I choose the sneaky option and I am again confronted by the card game. This time the Bone Crew will be fighting the abstract concept of stealth.

Luckily, my warriors are triumphant. I am told by the come across text that they rapidly assassinate the undead fighters without mercy. We collect their basic for research purposes.

Back in Bilge Finger, I but now realise that the villagers have been eating all the cherries. I was supposed to be saving those so I could discover some new buildings. You see, the crafting bill of fare in the home hamlet consists of several boxes that you have to click and drag unlike combinations of items into. For example, combining sure types of leather volition craft y'all a 'reptile vest', which offers some armour protection during card battles.

So far I have ordered Stab King, our all-time (simply) craftsman, to smush together vegetables, iron and wood to build a pasture. A field like this will produce 1 meat every turn simply as well go far more likely that someone will come up to our town and become part of our gang. Looking at the crafting carte, I suspect that the cherries would have mayhap revealed a new type of building if I had just fed 25 of them into these boxes, along with another mundane materials. But by the time I realised this, it was too late. The villagers had eaten all but 6 of the sugariness fruits. I stomped furiously into the supply management menu and started petty with the food options. Eating cherries is at present forbidden in Bilge Finger.

Only those plucky villagers aren't to be put down. Before long, I am told 2 of my subjects are going to get married. That's right, Funky Frida and Bogart McTrout are having their ritualistic wedding ceremony this evening, complete with naked dancing, customary alcohol consumption and a fight to commencement claret between fiancées. As is condign increasingly clear to me, Thea wants all of its events to be resolved in a uniform fashion. The wedding ceremony besides must take the form of the numbers menu game. This fourth dimension the villagers of Bilge Finger are fighting against the potentiality of a hangover. I am not making this up.

As ever, in that location is the option to car-resolve this ethereal encounter. But I am not certain I trust the game to do the numbers correctly. In hindsight, I should take. Considering the loftier number of alcohol units consumed (ie. the HP and assail force of the hangover cards) walks all over the villagers and they are soundly defeated thanks to my jumbled attack ordering. All of the villagers go affected by the 'sickness' status which I am told "probably won't kill you, simply it can lead to bothersome complications." The whole settlement now has a blinding headache.

Luckily, i of the half-dozen children locked in the storage cupboards of Bilge Finger has finally come up of historic period. I determine that she looks like a warrior. The game tells me she is called is Yanina, which, no no no, sounds all wrong to me. She is called Facekicker Pat. She has a wooden shield. She murders people. I mentally dust downward my easily and go on giving orders to my people, now seven-strong.

The tutorial imp comes dorsum, out of nowhere, and starts blabbing almost the darkness and the calorie-free, yada yada yada. I flick through the lengthy chatter of curses and demons and all the usual fantasy guff. It is important here to mention that all the quests and story events in Thea are narrated. The same man voices everything and reads out the dialogue of every character, which makes the whole game feel like its being read to yous by an old man while yous lie tucked upward in bed. Except, you are not a kid and y'all would similar the old man to finish and please exit. Thankfully, you lot can do this in the settings by dragging the voiceover book right down.

The tutorial imp offers me a map to the Catholic Tree, which I take in a bustle to become rid of him, but also considering I have no choice. The Cosmic Tree is now marked on my map, out there in the shroud. In the meantime, the Bone Coiffure returns home to rest and resupply while they gear up for the next trek – a mission to gather some dirt. I outfit a agglomeration of the crew with gathering tools and ready some stew and veg for them to accept with them. I also make up one's mind to put one of the children in their inventory, effectively taking the child with us out into the dangerous hinterland of creatures and death. They accept to learn some time. I briefly drag the other three children to the bin icon on the left of the inventory menu, just to see what happens.

I ponder this prompt for a moment and make up one's mind confronting destroying the children.

We leave next turn and make it to the clay pits. While gathering the dirt, we are attacked past goblins. They are much fiercer than anything nosotros've fought so far. Plop the Whizzo and Put-You-In-Stew are desperately wounded. But the child we took along must accept really learned from the trauma, because he immediately grows into a capable warrior, who the game thinks is called Valdek only who is actually called Whimsical Wally.

Nosotros celebrate his coming of age by hastily leaving Goblin territory, chased abroad by a particularly nasty looking goblin riding on the back of some horrible animal. Three skulls hover over this posse of baddies, signifying a sizeable threat. One skull is easy, 2 is more hard and iii very dangerous. Whatsoever more skulls and nosotros will probable be wiped out. Characters killed in card battles are wounded and if y'all get wounded plenty over multiple battles without resting or healing, the grapheme tin die.

Rather than taking on the goblin rider, we run away and start the quest to discover the whereabouts of the Cosmic Tree, if simply to gratify the tutorial imp.

Back in Bilge finger, at that place is some other wedding. Being stuck in a hamlet for long periods of fourth dimension must be forging some strong, loving bonds betwixt the gatherers and craftspeople who are too rubbish to go on the expeditions. Who will it be this time, I wonder. Why, it'south Bucket Daughter and ... Frida!?

"But Frida," I implore the game, "y'all are already married to Bogart McTrout."

"No, I'1000 not," says the game. "I'm marrying Bucket Girl."

Well, if that's what you want. This time I auto-resolve the battle with alcohol and over one-half of my followers are given a approving of attractiveness. What a roaring success. We should have more than polygamous weddings.

The days and turns pass slowly as the Os Crew go from hex to hex, talking to racist wizards and getting into arguments with magical trees. More children in the boondocks come of historic period, growing the settlement and putting a strain on our equipment. At that place aren't plenty swords and shirts to become effectually.

Only then exercise I realise, 5 hours into the game, that there has been a enquiry tree for construction hidden behind the enquiry tree for gatherable resources. All this time I accept been trying to combine resources in different ways to detect a different type of building – the aforementioned fashion the crafting works for tools, clothes and nutrient. Merely no matter how I combined the items, I always seemed to exist offered a pasture. Stone, veg, nighttime woods, harbinger? Pasture. Elf forest, branches, steel, wheat? Pasture.

That'due south because, for some reason, the method for hamlet constructions is unlike, despite looking identical. The way to unlock new buildings, like watchtowers and and so on, is hidden in a tab behind the normal inquiry menu. I accept been pumping all my inquiry points into bones. And these research points do not accrue chop-chop. I am very upset with the tutorial imp.

On the bright side, I take built so many pastures that all the bonuses are adding upward. My home town at present looks then idyllic that lots of new characters are arriving – there's Joe Stinkman the scavenger, and Murderbritches the armoured one, and there's Pot Hulk, who is and then good at crafting that I've made a gilded hammer just for her.

Bilge Finger has become a bustling city in this dark world. It has gone from half dozen cowering serfs to xviii well-armed and able-bodied men and women. The Bone Crew slink back into boondocks, having dealt with the Cosmic Tree. They met a werewolf on their manner dorsum, who attacked them with minor talk.

In the stop, the werewolf gave them some silver. Using this and more materials, the whole town starts preparing for our greatest trek withal. Mushroom soups are brewed, veggie stews stewed (in that location are no beef dishes because the villagers keep eating the raw meat earlier I have a adventure to cook information technology). All are now working toward the goal of our adjacent expedition - enchanted bones.

There is a symbol in the south-eastward which glows with their power – the remnants of some dead magician or arcane behemothic prevarication at that place. But I am worried we will not be potent enough to army camp at that place safely and gather them. It is deep in the territory of the Goblin Rider. Anyone who goes risks a brutal death.

Then she arrives. The chosen one. The woman who volition lead us all to greatness.

ThE bOnE mOtHeR walks among us.

To be continued….

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Source: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/thea-the-awakening-diary

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